The present invention pertains to the separation of material to be separated, which is suspended in a gas flow, in such a form that a crude gas flow is forced to enter the blade channels between the blades of a separator wheel rotating in a separation space against the action of the centrifugal force, in which channels coarser separated material is deflected radially toward the outside under the effect of the centrifugal force, while finer separated material is carried by the gas flow radially inwardly, and this gas flow containing the fines is removed from the separator wheel in the center of the separator wheel for further processing. This air separation is known state of the art and is, e.g., already state of the art according to EP 0 641 609 B1.
It is also a general state of the art that the cross section of a fluid flow is divided into a plurality of partial flows in order to affect the partial flows independently from one another in order to make uniform an overall flow that is nonuniform over its cross section due to unintended but unavoidable effects, i.e., to compensate the effects, or, in the contrary case, to make different an overall flow that is uniform over its entire cross section from the very beginning in a specific manner in different cross-sectional areas.
This principle described last was applied in DE-OS 36 22 413 in air separation in such a form that to favorably affect the separation effect of the separator and to save energy, the separating air to be fed to the separator wheel is divided by partitions into individual partial flows and each partial flow can be affected independently from the other partial flows in terms of volume and/or flow velocity. Corresponding to the number of the partial flows separated from each other, the blades of the separator wheel are divided in terms of their length. It is considered to be essential in this prior-art solution concerning the present invention that even though the separating air flowing to the separator wheel is divided by partitions in the incoming flow channel and the fluid mixture consisting of separating air and crude gas flow (air with particles suspended in it) by dividing the separating blades in terms of their height into partial flows, this forced division into partial flows is eliminated on the way from the outlet from the separator wheel to the fines outlet of the separator, and the composition of the flow of fines is more or less random over its entire cross section, and a forced effect is not provided, which in turn means that the separation limit is affected favorably only insufficiently.